18/09/2025
โค๏ธ
As part of our Pharmacy Month focus, we spoke to Tasneem Asmall, a production pharmacist in the inpatients pharmacy, about the new staff tea room mural she recently painted at the outpatients pharmacy.
โI have been at Groote Schuur Hospital for 11 years. I came here straight out of my community service placement in 2014.
I enjoy working at GS for a number of reasons. I have some really good colleagues that make the working environment a lot more comfortable and a nice place to work in. I'm grateful for the good colleagues I work with and a lot of them have become really amazing friends.
I also really enjoy helping people and I know that this is one of the places that we can actually make a difference. It is challenging because there is a high volume of patients coming to the pharmacies. But we have a team that's all on the same page about wanting to help patients, putting the patients first and working together to make things better, not only for the patients, but also for us.
I used to work at the outpatients pharmacy, but was recently rotated to the inpatient pharmacy. It is very busy from the time we get there until home time. But it's good to be doing something that has such a positive impact on people's lives.
I think the pharmacy team often feels like we are overlooked because all the nice wellness things happen during our peak periods. So weโve been looking at trying to incorporate wellness for pharmacy, by doing what we can during our quiet times of the day. Towards the end of last year, we said that our tea room needed a revamp. The windows were a little bit dirty and the walls needed to be cleaned and painted, so we decided to ask if it would be possible for us to do a mural.
I really enjoy painting and I actually run some art classes as a side hustle to help people. So that's why I thought it would be such a nice idea to do a cool mural and just make the tea room a more fun and lively space to walk into. We wanted to give people coming for tea and lunch something small to make them smile, whilst still having something related to pharmacy.
They asked me if I would be interested in helping with the project, which I did. It was really such a pleasure to work on it and I'm grateful that I got to do something nice for the team because they deserve nice things.
I got some help from some of my colleagues. A lot of people came to help when we were painting the blank wall. I had to do the details mainly by myself, but the first part of the project was a group effort.
We just wanted it to be a nice space to feel comfortable and where people can take their tea time and their lunchtime in a clean environment that brightens your day a little bit.โ
